1. In medium saute pan, over medium heat saute onions and garlic in 1 tbsp of olive oil until clear. Add the remaining oil and the lentils to the pan and saute these to slightly toast them.

****this is typically how you start a risotto but you should not try to toast the jasmine rice in this recipe. It is too thin and delicate of a grain, it will burn.

2. Add wine to the saute pan while hot and use this to “deglaze” the pan, ok this is the fancy pants term that really means to add fluid into the pan to scrap the goodies from the bottom of the pan, haha.

3. Add everything from saute pan, and all remaining ingredients (except the peas) into the crock pot. You have a few options to cook this and honestly it’s impossible to mess up a crock pot recipe. You can cook it on high for 2 hours, or low for 4-6 hours. Just make sure the lentils and the rice aren’t crunchy. The more you let those Indian spices cook, they better they are!

4. About 30 minutes before you want to serve the lentils, throw in the peas (trust me…don’t put them in early..they turn to brown mush).

I like to garnish this with fresh tomatoes, but I think I just put tomatoes on everything.

LENTIL LESSON:

So I used yellow lentils for this….but look at the whole rainbow of the variety of lentils…test them all!!!